


Waxing & Waning

by tessdebelle



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter AU, Hufflepuff May, Slytherin Coulson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25045387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessdebelle/pseuds/tessdebelle
Summary: Her answering grin was more than enough – Melinda May was special.A Philinda Hogwarts AU.
Relationships: Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Comments: 8
Kudos: 52





	1. First Meeting

Hogwarts was touted as a school where everyone was equal and all were welcome, but in truth, some children were simply… different.

Perhaps it was some deadly curse, the remnants of a cruel creator of their world’s bigotry, but some children at Hogwarts rejoiced in being cold to one another, and the teachers turned their backs on the students whose lives were made so much harder than their peers.

And two third years in particularly often drew the ire of others, for nothing more than not fitting what was expected of them.

Melinda May wasn’t the kind of gentle that the rest of her house of Hufflepuffs were. Cold would be a strong word, especially given how the Hufflepuff common room was always filled with the warmth of a hearth and the smell of fresh baked bread. But, while the rest of her house was interested in Herbology, she preferred to study Defense Against the Dark Arts. Melinda could be found tucked away somewhere in the Hufflepuff common room, reading about the dark arts, and whenever someone would interrupt her from her queries into that world, they would swear she _growled_ at them.

It wasn’t in the nature of Hufflepuffs to tease or mock, certainly. They tried to be kind, for the most part. But Melinda was just different from them, and the whispers from others about how strange she was never really stopped.

It was fine with her. Melinda was just glad her secret wasn’t out, and that she was allowed to attend the school at all.

While Melinda was too close-off for her house, Phil was too warm for his.

Slytherin house had a reputation for upholding pureblood ideals of wizardry. While there were half-blood and muggleborn witches and wizards in the house every couple of years, few were a part of the house, and even fewer of those stuck around long enough. Many had decided to receive tutoring elsewhere and hadn’t wanted to step foot in Hogwarts Castle again for the experiences they’d had in the ‘pureblood’ house.

Phil Coulson, a half-blood Slytherin, was determined to ignore the taunts. And, moreover, he was determined to embody the good qualities of his house, rather than forcing the bad onto others.

He was friendly. He was competitive, already vying for being a quidditch keeper, but he wasn’t cruel in it. He wanted to succeed, but he wanted to use his success to bring up others as well. He strove to help others in class, even if they weren’t of his house.

That was what brought him down to the dungeons, where potions classes normally were, on an evening when other students were likely studying or playing chess.

A tiny voice cursed in a language he wasn’t familiar with, and he peaked his head in. He’d just been planning to make a few notes for a first year he knew was struggling in their potions class, when he saw her, standing over a cauldron.

Phil had noticed Melinda since they’d been at school together for a few years, but he’d never really interacted with her. Slytherin and Gryffindor, natural rivals, were usually paired together in classes in an attempt to encourage harmony between the two houses. As a result, other than meal times and three classes over the past two years, he hadn’t seen much of Hufflepuff – or much of the enchanting looking, but closed off, young girl.

Standing just outside the doorway, confident she had yet to notice him, Phil watched as her shoulders slumped in front of the cauldron. He creeped in closer and noted the grey sludge that filled her cauldron, the detailed images of what potion she was making eluding him, though he noted a plume of blue smoke on the images.

He was about to take a closer look at the book and offer his help when Melinda froze, and – he swore he had to be imagining it – _sniffed_ the very air and spun around. A bronze lethality flashed in her eyes as she stalked closer to him and Phil backed up, stumbling into one of the wide wooden desks. “What are you doing here?” She growled.

Perhaps the growl comments had been an exaggeration, but Phil could have sworn that, if she’d wanted, she could have bared fangs at him.

“I just came to look for a book, but I saw you, and I thought maybe I could -“ He grimaced, glancing at the book and the mess of a potion. Melinda rushed to slam the book shut, clenching it to her chest and looking at him in a way that – well, at first he had thought it was anger, but the tension in her shoulders didn’t speak to anger. It spoke to _fear_.

Whatever kind of potion she had been trying to make, she was afraid that he might react badly to it.

Shaking his head, ruffling the tufts of soft brown hair that never quite settled right on his head, he stuck out his hand to her even as his cheeks turned a ruddy shade of red, a blush forming along them. “I’m Coulson. Er, Phil. Phil Coulson.” He said.

“I know.”

After a second, Melinda shook his hand, and Phil glanced down for a second and saw the mass of scars that traced over the back of her hands and up her forearm. Long-faded scars, that looked like they once had torn into flesh and bled profusely.

Noticing him looking at them, Melinda tugged her arm away, sliding down her sleeve to cover it more fully. “Melinda May.”

From what he’d heard, the whispers of his house, Phil expected he shouldn’t want to care so deeply about this girl. The scars up her arms, the cold fury in her eyes, the secretive potions… the dark taunts of _different_ coated his tongue like rotten pumpkin juice.

And yet, a louder voice, this one all his, said something else. _Special._

“I stole some sugar quills from one of the older kids in my house and he’s pissed. Wanna eat the evidence with me so I can’t get caught?”

Her answering grin was more than enough – Melinda May was special.


	2. Amortentia

Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Herbology, and Charms. Even before attending Hogwarts, Phil already had studied those five courses with a deep intensity. He’d wanted to be an auror after hearing all the stories of his father, and had researched it extensively. His desperation to become an auror only grew once he started at school, and he began working on the courses.

So far, Defense Against the Dark Arts was his best course – although he was far and away not as good at it as Melinda. Although she seemed to not want others to see how much she excelled, it came as naturally to her as breathing.

On his part, he still did pretty well in potions. It was a Slytherin talent, and while he wasn’t quite as good as some of his peers, he was around potions all the time and they soon became easy. It was like cooking – a pastime he enjoyed even though the rest of his house mocked it.

It was on one of those days in the potions dungeon, during a lecture, that the professor took out a vial of a pale blue liquid, passing it around the room and asking students to identify what they smelled.

When the little vial got around to Phil’s table, he held it under his nose, taking a deep sniff of it and finding a soft smile on his face as the image it held wrapped around him like a warm blanket. The smell of the tea Melinda preferred – green, with a tiny dash of lemon – soaked into his veins. Her smile and laughter. Beneath that scent, others that reminded him of comfort and love filled him. His father’s freshly laundered robes, a scent he hadn’t smelled since he was a child. Home.

“Mr. Coulson?”

Phil’s head jerked up and he quickly passed the little vial along to his desk neighbor, face turning beet red.

* * *

Melinda abhorred potions. Trying to mix up her own meant that she did enough during extra hours, and the potions dungeon felt more unwelcoming every single day. It was dark and cold and pressed onto her skin like it knew all of her secrets. The day they’d learned about veritaserum, she’d had nightmares for several days of accidentally drinking it and spilling to the entire school every detail of her life; the things she would rather have kept to herself.

Today’s lesson was another simply to learn and not to make, which she was grateful for. Although the professor hadn’t shared what the potion was, Melinda thought it looked familiar – like she’d seen it in one of the books she’d been searching through for her own potion, its ingredients nearly as rare and the potion itself nearly as valuable. The pearly blue vial was passed around the room, and she held it between her fingers, hating the eyes that stared her down and the whispers around the room as she sniffed, trying not to pull in too much of the scent, wary of her senses being more intense than those of her peers.

It smelled like… Apples. That was Melinda’s first impression, and something clicked in her mind as she turned over the thoughts and recalled a memory. The vial was passed on, but Melinda was lost in reveries.

She and Phil, sneaking out of their respective dormitories and to the kitchens. He had baked her apples with his mother’s favorite recipes. They were spiced and sweet, with delicate pastry dough wrapped around the filling. He’d had flour on his nose. It was the first time since she was seven that she could remember really, truly enjoying herself.

Phil was changing her life, making her smile again, and some part of her thought that might actually be a good thing.


	3. Howl

One day until the moon was full once again, and Melinda felt as if she was going to crawl out of her own skin.

Unfortunately, this was a sensation she was more than familiar with – one she’d experienced since she was five years old, in fact. The tugging in her gut, the yearning to feel the air on her fur, and the feel that she was on edge and ready to attack someone who might be a possible threat.

Despite the fact that Melinda May was a mere fourteen years of age, she knew she was more fear-inspiring than her fellow students, as well as more capable of harming people. It wasn’t that she _wanted_ to do such things – it was simply that she knew she could. In fact, she didn’t want to. The thought of harming her fellow students kept her awake late into the night. Almost as much as the fear of her one and only friend turning from her when – if – he discovered the truth about her.

The truth that his friend, who he thought was good and gentle despite her harsh exterior, had a secret that could get her kicked out of Hogwarts. The wolf that hungered beneath her palms and howled behind her eyes. The story of the wolf pup that Melinda had tried to help as a child, only to get attacked – scars up the entire length of her arms and to her neck – and discover the pup was not a pup at all, but a werewolf. A month later, Melinda had turned for the first time, and she became what the rest of the wizarding world feared. A werewolf.

It felt bitter on her tongue, Melinda having studied everything about her kind and learning how few werewolves were even civilized. That only a scant few had ever prowled the halls of Hogwarts, the school she had desperately wanted to attend before the attack. That even if they were civilized, most werewolves still lived at the fringes of their society, never to be accepted. If it weren’t for the aging Headmaster Carter, who determined that Melinda would be a good fit for the school despite her ailment, she would have spent her whole life at home, never to study magic or meet witches and wizards her age.

So distinctly unlike herself, Phil Coulson had a warmth that she never managed to cultivate in herself. It was one of the oddest things, because of course she, one of the few cold Hufflepuffs, would befriend the kindest, warmest that the Slytherin house had to offer. His warm smiles belied his sharp wit, and if she didn’t know better she might think he was in the wrong house. But his eagerness to become his house’s youngest Keeper, his competitiveness in class, and his cold gaze when someone insulted Melinda, proved otherwise.

Would he still have that same look if he found out the truth, or would he be mocking her with the rest? Would he be afraid?

Over the last few days while she waited for the day of the full moon, Melinda had avoided Phil’s company entirely. It was harder than she’d expected, and when he cornered her just hours before she was to go off to the shrieking shack, she was torn between cowering in fear and lashing out at him.

“Haven’t seen you much lately.” Phil said, with a causality that, had she not known him better, she might have thought was honest. But a hint of distrust laced his words, and she knew he suspected _something_ was up – that there was something wrong, even.

Ducking quickly under his arm – one of the few benefits to her short stature, Melinda tried to slip past him. She didn’t want to get into this, to be around him when the wolf felt so close to breaking out at any moment. The only thing holding it back being the moon that had yet to show itself. Her wolf wanted something from Phil, but she only understood about half of what that part of her felt. It hungered and craved and wanted to rip anything it saw to shreds, but Phil was… Odd. Around him, it still was eager and ravenous, but less like an animal looking at a couch to chew to pieces and more like a dragon trying to guard its treasure. “I’ve been busy.” She muttered softly, trying to duck away from him.

He caught the edge of her robe, trying to get her attention. “I just wanted to see you.” He said in that tone of voice that made her want to melt into a puddle. That wanted to just care for him, and care about him, and forgo all the secrets. Those big blue-green eyes that made her want to trust in a way she hadn’t trusted since that wolf pup.

“Okay, well, you’re seeing me now, alright?” She asked angrily, snapping at him in a manner that had Phil letting go of her robe as quickly as he’d caught it, as if he’d been burned – or bitten. Melinda dashed off, having to prepare for her journey to the Womping Willow, to slip under it and into the Shrieking Shack before she could harm anyone.

* * *

As Melinda’s body started to shrink into her normal form as the dawn came, she shouted in pain, tiny wolf cries becoming the shouts of a girl. Her skin felt like it was being stretched and shrunk to the breaking point, her bones readjusting in place. She collapsed onto the hard wooden boards beneath her, all limbs and scar tissue, falling unconscious for a scant few moments before consciousness and sanity returned.

Standing on shaky legs and feeling like they should have been paws, Melinda swayed in relief, stumbling and leaning against the nearby wall. Her blood dripped onto the splintering wood, and she managed to make it to the cracked and fogged mirror in the corner to look at herself. During those nights, alone, she often would attack herself. With no humans to turn, she scratched and bit at her own paws, snarled at herself and howled in rage. Now, those injuries presented themselves in her human form.

Nude after her ordeal, Melinda scanned her body for new scars. The ones from her first attacke graced all up and down her arms and to her neck, the reason she kept bundled up most of the time, hidden. They were pale and faded, after almost ten years of growing with them. But the new scars were fresh, some an angry red and some scabbing over. Bruises littered her back and to her hips, remnants of the painful transformation and of repeatedly tossing herself against the walls. Her knees were scraped and a scar graced her cheekbone, pulling when she made a face in the mirror.

Although she still shook, Melinda slowly began to dress herself, wincing in pain. The feeling of returning to her human form after a night of being her wolf felt like recovering from an illness. Her body shook and shivered, devoid of nutrients and exhausted, and she was ready to collapse into exhaustion at any moment. It was like she’d expelled everything in her body, the good with the bad, and there was no longer enough substance in her to keep herself afloat. Her routine had hardly changed since she’d started at Hogwarts, with the only difference being that now she no longer needed an escort. When she first came to Hogwarts, a professor would lead her to the willow and let her out; now that she was older, she was trusted to be there alone. It was safer that way. Before the full moon, she went to the Shrieking Shack, bringing herself a meager dinner, bandages, and clothing for the next day. A spell, cast on the doorway out of it to the Womping Willow, kept her from leaving. When she woke, she dressed and returned, slowly, to school.

Once Melinda had pulled on her robes and wrapped up her freshest injuries, she slipped through the passageway, using her wand to light the way towards the Womping Willow when she saw a figure in the dark passage.

Phil.

Melinda darted to him at a speed that her aching body protested, quickly inspecting his body. He was slumped against the curved walls of the tunnel, a book against his chest. She checked him for signs of life and releasing a tight breath when she realized he was only sleeping. Melinda shook him, gently, trying to get Phil to wake up. She softly called his name and, in the dim wandlight, he opened his eyes to see her. “Hey.” He said, smiling softly at her with those big blue eyes as if everything was fine.

Sitting back on the other side of the tunnel, Melinda glowered at him, arms crossed. “Hey? That’s it? What in the name of Merlin were you doing down here?”

Just waking up from a deep sleep, Phil yawned, stretching. “I was going to wait up for you, but I guess I fell asleep.” He gave her that same dopey grin that made her stomach turn to jelly, and Melinda slid down to the tunnel floor, across from her. Phil’s long, lanky legs were spread out before him, while Melinda was tucked in on herself. Afraid of coming too close. Less bleary eyed, Phil dug around in the bag beside him, withdrawing a small purple vial. He took out a cloth as well, depositing a few drops of potion onto the fabric before dabbing them against the fresh cut on her cheek.

The potion – a wound purifier, she now realized – smoked upon contact with her skin and stung, but began to soothe a few moments later. It was an advanced potion, but she knew Phil was gifted in potions – unlike her. She’d been trying unsuccessfully to brew Wolfsbane for a year. “Aconite is quite expensive, you know. When I found out you were putting it into a potion, I thought I might research what you were doing with it, see if I’d be able to help.”

Melinda stiffened when she realized what he was saying.

“A handful of potions use it, most of which are quite advanced, but its most infamous use is the other name for it. Wolfsbane.” He sat back after treating her cheek, cocking his head at her with a soft, knowing smile. “It was pretty easy to figure out after that. Every month you disappeared during the full moon, and came back looking exhausted. You’re a werewolf.”

It was such a matter-of-fact statement that Melinda felt her heart start to crumble and crack. _Yes_ , a werewolf. A monster. A thing that wizards only heard in the form of nightmares and their worst fears. “Please don’t tell anyone else. I don’t want to leave.” She whimpered, wrapping her arms around herself.

Phil’s face, so full of confidence moments ago, fell as he came closer, tucking her under his arm. Melinda stiffened for a moment, terrified, but found herself settling into him, tucking her head against his soft shirt. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone. It’s your secret. I just – wanted to make sure you were safe.” He said, looking down at her. Brilliantly blue eyes stared into her chocolate brown and she tucked her head against his neck, sighing and letting out a dry sob. He rubbed her back softly. “I’m still your friend, Lin. And I’ll take care of you. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is just a little quick and unbetaed piece I scribbled out at 1AM, so please don't judge! There are some teases as to some of the ideas I'd like to get into in this AU, as well as a little callout @ JKR for being TERF garbage. 
> 
> I hopefully will have this be an AU 'verse with a few chapters showing different times in their lives in this world, so comment if there's any kind of Potter-esque scenario you'd like to see Philinda in!


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